I don’t care what they do. Even if I hadn’t already been boycotting EA for 10+ years, I’d never install Saudi-owned ring-0 “anticheat” software on any of my computers.
Bloodbath Ahead For EA As It Looks To Cut $700 Million In Annual Costs Under Saudi Arabia
Submitted 5 days ago by mereo@piefed.ca to games@lemmy.world
Comments
thethrilloftime69@feddit.online 4 days ago
Well my days is not buying EA products are certainly coming to a middle.
BottleBoardBakon@lemmy.ml 4 days ago
Shit company gets worse
northendtrooper@lemmy.ca 4 days ago
A lot of people are glancing over the fact that now a country is running this Video Game company. I’m not betting that the Saudis will: Open up old IPs, take care of labor costs, respect the players, not install spyware onto customer’s machines and report their party affiliation or any government secrets stored on said machine.
If you didn’t trust EA being run by a private company then I bet you won’t trust EA being ran by a government.
FoxAlive@lemmy.zip 4 days ago
Games are essentially attack vectors with kernal level access to your computer.
The united States is looking at doing something about Chinese gaming companies, yet we are okay with handing over what is essentially a back door over to the Saudis.
I just think its weird what malware we are okay with.
Jax@sh.itjust.works 4 days ago
Games are essentially attack vectors with kernal level access to your computer.
Some games, with very specific anticheat. Let’s not spread misinformation.
That being said, yeah I don’t get it either - I refused to play Valorant for this reason.
EarMaster@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Even worse: Jared Kushner is involved as well.
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 days ago
The Saudi Absolute Monarchy aren’t exactly know for their concern for the average person or their ability in managing anything that’s not the kind of business which is basically a self-operating money printing machine, like Oil.
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 days ago
Anyone who did not see this coming is an idiot.
auzy1@lemmy.world 4 days ago
It takes a lot of money to make the same games for 25 years straight, change the front logo, the names of the players, make tiny tweaks and market it.
Maybe they need to start releasing Sims 2025, 2026, etc.
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 days ago
I will never forgive EA for destroying Maxis.
Johanno@feddit.org 4 days ago
The problem is that they actually needed that much money for such mediocre games. They poured money into it and still made it an inferior game.
Nilz@sopuli.xyz 4 days ago
They are in a lof of debt because of the buy out.
PhoenixDog@lemmy.world 4 days ago
They’re also in a lot of debt from making dog shit for the last 15 years.
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 days ago
Kind of yes, but actually no.
We just see that debt now, its explicit.
EA … was subject to a leveraged buy out, that they sought out. They did this… because they needed cash, now.
What that means is that their internal financials were an absolute shit show… that they had, up untill that point, basically just legally lied about, hid, downplayed.
They fluffed up their balances and returns and cashflows in ways that are legal to do, but if you actually do due dilligence, you could read the writing on the wall.
Its basically the same as any other US company that got bought out / sold itself to private equity in the last 10 or 15 years.
Difference is, EA is so huge, it had to be bought out by essentially a sovereign wealth fund.
FerrisEuler@programming.dev 3 days ago
They’ve not had a lot of success in the 2020s except for sports games they obviously pay a lot of money in licensing fees for.
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 days ago
The Sims.
You do not want to know how many ‘dlc’ there are for your digital dollhouse.
As well as entire community of enthusiastic corporate boot lickers with a ‘cozy’ aesthetic.
BlackLaZoR@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Do you know, why EA is the worst company in the whole US of A? It’s because Ubisoft is in France.
bobbbu@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 days ago
Good one!
Paradachshund@lemmy.today 5 days ago
The liquidation shall continue until
moralstakeholder wealth improvesZippyMammoth@lemmy.zip 4 days ago
While* stakeholder wealth improves
Zephorah@discuss.online 4 days ago
Well, there goes the last remnant of possibility for a dragon age or mass effect revival.
Replaying Dishonored 2, still mad about Arkane.
It’s like the long game is to kill gaming from two directions. Game Studio deaths and making PC components unaffordable for working class.
mereo@piefed.ca 4 days ago
That’s what I’m worried about. I played the Mass Effect Trilogy several times and they’re my all times favourite.
But this Saudi Arabia deal is not good for the industry because as we know, Saudi Arabia is a very conservative muslim country and it will destroy the creative process.
nullspace@lemmy.world 4 days ago
The funny thing is Mass Effect destroyed the series themselves with Andromeda. No Saudi help necessary.
Zephorah@discuss.online 4 days ago
ME manages to incorporate just about every SciFi trope in a good way, have punchy dialogue and characters, offer chills at some points, and have a great overarching plot. More importantly, they give it an ending.
BioWare really fucked themselves with that EA deal. I don’t see them saving themselves like Amplitude did. I suppose there’s DDO, it’s still around, love of D&D being what it is within D&D communities The devs made a deal with Warner Brothers and now it’s Standing Stone, but how often has that happened? Mostly, studios just die.
AHemlocksLie@lemmy.zip 4 days ago
It’s like the long game is to kill gaming from two directions. Game Studio deaths and making PC components unaffordable for working class.
They can kill AAA gaming, but devs will just learn to adapt to the hardware limitations of their time. If you’ve got a device you can install stuff on, devs will figure out how to make it run games. They may not be as shiny, which is practically sacrilege to the AAA player community, but so long as we have hardware, we’ll have games.
Zephorah@discuss.online 4 days ago
I grew up with a card catalog and had Netscape navigator at college right out of high school. Stellar graphics are great, preferred, but not necessary. Would I care if graphics/engine quality went back to Dragon age origins or II? Mass effect the original? Even FO:NV? No. But I want the story level, complexity, and total game time to be completionist about it. Witcher 3 is lovely but it’s the quality of darkness in it that makes it so compelling.
Even without the hardware limitations, good, immersive stories that keep you as involved as GoT before the writers stopped writing are already in short supply.
I’m presently replaying the Dishonored games. There’s only so much of that a person can do. Games worth the time sink are already in short supply.
Candy crush and similar bullshit can’t replace good games.
dellish@lemmy.world 4 days ago
I can’t wait to play Battlefield 7: Saudi Victory Over The Jews.
fml
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 days ago
Given their bubby buddy relationship with the Zionist Supremacist Nation, it’s more likely “Saudi Victory Over The Persians”.
Eyck_of_denesle@lemmy.zip 4 days ago
Jews Victory over The Jews?
Wispy2891@lemmy.world 4 days ago
They paid 53 bil for something that has only 300 mil /year in profits?
A 200 year ROI (interest on the 20 bil loan for the leveraged buyout that ea itself will need to pay) doesn’t seems too bad
Tigeroovy@lemmy.ca 4 days ago
But the CEO’s job will be okay right?
PhoenixDog@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Just wait for the article that the CEO is getting a $700 million bonus.
SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 3 days ago
CEO Andrew Wilson is set for a massive payday. The company’s last SEC filing before going private pointed to a $77 million payout for the last fiscal year, double the number that was previously reported.
One of the finer aspects of unfettered capitalism.
brucethemoose@lemmy.world 3 days ago
That’s actually crazy.
For reference, Split Fiction’s development cost was ~$40 million USD over ~3-4 years, ~75 devs. That’s one of EA’s better games, and not cheap.
It 11% of what they’re looking to cut!
4am@lemmy.zip 4 days ago
I don’t understand why you’d buy something and then essentially destroy what it was. Everyone sees you doing this, are they actually going to make money?
LurkingLuddite@piefed.social 4 days ago
Yes. Just like a farmer can make money butchering their cattle, these private equity type fucks always find a way to pocket every penny.
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 days ago
It’s even better than that: it’s buying the farm by indebting the farm itself to then butcher the cattle, sell all buildings, sell the lands and sell the tractors, keeping the money.
Private Equity keeps the money from selling the valuable parts of the company whilst the debt is owed by the company, which is now bankrupt and if they properly use Bankruptcy Law they might even manage to extract a bit more money out of the rotting corpse.
postmateDumbass@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Just another Blue Star Airlines
skisnow@lemmy.ca 4 days ago
Leveraged buyouts should be illegal
Arghblarg@lemmy.ca 4 days ago
I would say “never has there been a more moral case for pirating the sh*t out of everything this company makes”, since they always exploit and lay off their workers after projects are done, shut down studios, etc…
…but most of their stuff is recycled sports drek, so don’t even pirate it. Just ignore it, and tell everyone you know how horrible EA is and has always been, and who its new owners are. Hopefully they’ll never buy their crap again either.
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 days ago
So, destroy its game making capabilities and just make money for the next 20 years from of microtransaction on existing content.
Kinda of a natural progression of AAA game publishers given the way things are nowadays.
Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Though how many devs does it take to increment one number for the new version of the game?
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 days ago
It massivelly depends on what changes and how well in terms of software design the whole is done, and judging from what I’ve seen, for multiple reasons (it’s easier to exploit yound and naived developers and those don’t know how to do good software design; performance tends to be a big thing in games dev and performance optiomizantion generally goes against good software design; it’s an area that tends towards experimentalism rather than well though integrated software design) gamedev isn’t an area of software development were software design tends to be good.
ours@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Bloodbath… Saudi Arabia
How literally are we talking here?
balgruuf@nord.pub 3 days ago
Unnecessary employees will be invited to the nearest consulate
Nickelalloy@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Imagine of lots of game developers that gets fired now goes out and start working on indie-games.
absquatulate@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Funded by who? EA has tens of thousands of 100k/year employees
GardenGeek@europe.pub 4 days ago
What else are they going to do? Flip burgers for minimum wage? Depends on how much they personall liked developing games relative to making big money I guess…
knuk@piefed.ca 4 days ago
Going indie from scratch means going no income for years for a project that may never succeed, not everyone can afford the risk. Existing indie studio have very limited hiring capacity compared to the amount of people getting laid off from big companies.
UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml 4 days ago
AFAIK Schedule 1 is developed by a single dev still in college.
pnwpixel@programming.dev 3 days ago
And? What fucks are there left to give about a publically malicious/murderous government buying a publically malicious company which publically destroys their creatives ability to stay alive in this capitalist shitscape?
I want the heart and soul of those studios (the creatives) to create a tsunami of indie studios to revive the long lost connection between the gamers and the makers.
We have to support indie devs if we want gaming to be better for all involved.
Bakkoda@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Sell 700 one million dollar skins
AdolfSchmitler@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Don’t tempt the whales
TheVoiceOfRaison@thelemmy.club 4 days ago
Mass Effect team must be shitting bricks.
mursejoy@lemmy.zip 4 days ago
Should have made something worth playing in the last 10+ years then.
These legacy studios with expensive old heads are going to be a thing of the past.
sen@lemmy.zip 4 days ago
Thank you for reminding me that just like Todd Howard whoever is in charge of Mass Effect has seriously shit the bed and deserves to get fired (though it’ll never happen, instead their studio will get gutted and they’ll get a raise).
OpenPassageways@lemmy.zip 4 days ago
Seems like some former Mass Effect devs are working on a game called Exodus that looks good.
KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml 4 days ago
Gaming layoffs are now on track to eclipse 2024 and 2025 combined.
Tronn4@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Aaaand there’s the other shoe
Surp@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Not sure why it seems “they” don’t want us enjoying games anymore…the powers that be.
UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml 4 days ago
The fully automated combat drone army is almost done.
Patrikvo@lemmy.zip 4 days ago
You’re still allowed to work unpaid overtime.
MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 4 days ago
Time to block internet for some Wine-prefixes i guess.
Crackhappy@lemmy.world 4 days ago
If you
Su
Sg
You get sausage.
ParlimentOfDoom@piefed.zip 4 days ago
Saudi Arabia beheading another American [resident]?
xSikes@feddit.online 4 days ago
They are just buying data not making games.
SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 3 days ago
KSA is staggeringly rich but can’t pay for their purchase.
Abyssian@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Finally, some good news. Maybe Saudi Arabia bought EA to burn it down and make the world a better place.
YurkshireLad@lemmy.ca 4 days ago
Well that’s the end of EA. The owners will tear it apart and bleed it dry.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 4 days ago
People have been predicting the death of EA for over twenty years.
Meanwhile, they release another Madden and another FIFA and another Sims and another Star Wars, then mint themselves another $7B. Nevermind that all of these games are just reskinned copies of the games they’ve been releasing going back to the mid-90s.
TheFeatureCreature@lemmy.ca 4 days ago
Yesn’t.
That may have been somewhat true in the past, but it is hard to articulate just how big of a hole they are in right now. The leveraged buyout has pushed EA’s debt to over $20Billion USD.
They make that money back or they might not, but they are going to absolutely pillage and destroy the company in the process. The word that often follows “leveraged buyout” is “bankruptcy”. It’s a tale as old as corporate history.
boonhet@sopuli.xyz 4 days ago
Another Sims? Don’t be daft. They’ll release another Sims DLC and get all the money with much less effort.
KC_Royalz@lemmy.world 4 days ago
I bought battlefield 6 still enjoy it. And I bought the first year college football came back. But haven’t bought one since. And have hardly touched it. Game was much harder than the old days
Canconda@lemmy.ca 4 days ago
I did a buad report on EA once. TLDR they’re basically Martin Shkreli but a corporation.
boonhet@sopuli.xyz 4 days ago
Like Martin Shkreli in that they’ll increase the price of a life-saving drug 20x without consequences, or like Martin Shkreli in that they’ll go to prison for defrauding rich investors?
Seriously fucked up that the second was considered a crime, but not the first, in Shkreli’s case.
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 days ago
Well, the natural evolution from “keep on squeezing existing IP without inventing anything new” is "“keep in squeezing published games without publishing any new games” .
artyom@piefed.social 4 days ago
Good riddance
Canconda@lemmy.ca 4 days ago
lol this guy thought that was EA’s final form! /s